Failed to enable constraints. One or more rows contain values violating non-null, unique, or foreign-key constraints

Question

This problem is usually caused by one of the following

• null values being returned for columns not set to AllowDBNull
• duplicate rows being returned with the same primary key.
• a mismatch in column definition (e.g. size of char fields) between the database and the dataset

Try running your query natively and look at the results, if the resultset is not too large. If you've eliminated null values, then my guess is that the primary key columns is being duplicated.

Or, to see the exact error, you can manually add a Try/Catch block to the generated code like so and then breaking when the exception is raised:

Then within the command window, call GetErrors method on the table getting the error.
For C#, the command would be ? dataTable.GetErrors()
For VB, the command is ? dataTable.GetErrors

This will show you all datarows which have an error. You can get then look at the RowError for each of these, which should tell you the column that's invalid along with the problem. So, to see the error of the first datarow in error the command is:
? dataTable.GetErrors(0).RowError
or in C# it would be ? dataTable.GetErrors()[0].RowError

You can disable the constraints on the dataset. It will allow you to identify bad data and help resolve the issue.

e.g.

dataset.TableA.Clear();
dataset.EnforceConstraints = false;
dataAdapter1.daTableA.Fill(dataset, TableA");

The fill method might be slightly different for you.

This will find all rows in the table that have errors, print out the row's primary key and the error that occurred on that row...

This is in C#, but converting it to VB should not be hard.

 foreach (DataRow dr in dataTable)
 {
   if (dr.HasErrors)
     {
        Debug.Write("Row ");
        foreach (DataColumn dc in dataTable.PKColumns)
          Debug.Write(dc.ColumnName + ": '" + dr.ItemArray[dc.Ordinal] + "', ");
        Debug.WriteLine(" has error: " + dr.RowError);
     }
  }

Oops - sorry PKColumns is something I added when I extended DataTable that tells me all the columns that make up the primary key of the DataTable. If you know the Primary Key columns in your datatable you can loop through them here. In my case, since all my datatables know their PK cols I can write debug for these errors automatically for all tables.

The output looks like this:

Row FIRST_NAME: 'HOMER', LAST_NAME: 'SIMPSON', MIDDLE_NAME: 'J',  has error: Column 'HAIR_COLOR' does not allow DBNull.Value.

If you're confused about the PKColumns section above - this prints out column names and values, and is not necessary, but adds helpful troubleshooting info for identifying which column values may be causing the issue. Removing this section and keeping the rest will still print the SQLite error being generated, which will note the column that has the problem.

• Ensure the fields named in the table adapter query match those in the query you have defined. The DAL does not seem to like mismatches. This will typically happen to your sprocs and queries after you add a new field to a table.

• If you have changed the length of a varchar field in the database and the XML contained in the XSS file has not picked it up, find the field name and attribute definition in the XML and change it manually.

• Remove primary keys from select lists in table adapters if they are not related to the data being returned.

• Run your query in SQL Management Studio and ensure there are not duplicate records being returned. Duplicate records can generate duplicate primary keys which will cause this error.

• SQL unions can spell trouble. I modified one table adapter by adding a ‘please select an employee’ record preceding the others. For the other fields I provided dummy data including, for example, strings of length one. The DAL inferred the schema from that initial record. Records following with strings of length 12 failed.

This worked for me, source: here

I had this error and it wasn't related with the DB constrains (at least in my case). I have an .xsd file with a GetRecord query that returns a group of records. One of the columns of that table was "nvarchar(512)" and in the middle of the project I needed to changed it to "nvarchar(MAX)".

Everything worked fine until the user entered more than 512 on that field and we begin to get the famous error message "Failed to enable constraints. One or more rows contain values violating non-null, unique, or foreign-key constraints."

Solution: Check all the MaxLength property of the columns in your DataTable.

The column that I changed from "nvarchar(512)" to "nvarchar(MAX)" still had the 512 value on the MaxLength property so I changed to "-1" and it works!!.

The problem is with the Data Access designer. In Visual Studio, When we pull a View from "Server Explorer" to the Designer window, it is adding either a Primary key on a column randomly or marking something to a NOT NULL though it is actually set to null. Though the actual View creation in the SQL db server, doesn't have any primary key defined or the NOT NULL defined, the VS designer is adding this Key/constraint.

You can see this in the designer - it is shown with a key icon on left of the column name.

Solution: Right click on the key icon and select 'Delete Key'. This should solve the problem. You can also right click on a column and select "Properties" to see the list of properties of a column in the VS Data access designer and change the values appropriately.